Efficient solar-driven electrocatalytic CO2 reduction in a redox-medium-assisted system

Solar-driven electrochemical carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) reduction is capable of producing value-added chemicals and represents a potential route to alleviate carbon footprint in the global environment. However, the ever-changing sunlight illumination presents a substantial impediment of maintaining high electrocatalytic efficiency and stability for practical applications. Inspired by green plant photosynthesis with separate light reaction and (dark) carbon fixation steps, herein, we developed a redox-medium-assisted system that proceeds water oxidation with a nickel-iron hydroxide electrode under light illumination and stores the reduction energy using a zinc/zincate redox, which can be controllably released to spontaneously reduce CO 2 into carbon monoxide (CO) with a gold nanocatalyst in dark condition. This redox-medium-assisted system enables a record-high solar-to-CO photoconversion efficiency of 15.6% under 1-sun intensity, and an outstanding electric energy efficiency of 63%. Furthermore, it allows a unique tuning capability of the solar-to-CO efficiency and selectivity by the current density applied during the carbon fixation. Generating high-energy fuels from sunlight, water, and CO 2 using synthetic materials requires, among many things, the careful separation of reduced and oxidized products. Here, authors employ a zinc-based redox pair to spatially and temporally separate light-driven water oxidation and CO 2 reduction.